Friday, November 23, 2007

"Satire around the four numbers of the year'1690', each representing a continent at war"

"Set of twelve horizontal compositions of comicfigures with large heads and small bodies, engaged indifferent group activities" 1686 (After Pietro de Rossi)

'Machina del Mondo, ogn'un cerca di star sopra il compagno'

"A pyramid of ten persons climbing on top of each other,the poor at the bottom, the king at the top; Death appears totake them all" - "Titled along the top and with tennumbered identifications of the persons in the pyramidand with Death stating 'Et io tutti pareggio'" 1675-1710

'Bugia peste e cagion d'ogni gran male'

"Allegorical figure of Lying, a woman with one legand her dress covered with masks" 1680-1710

[addit: this text is obviously wrong - the Museum staff have changed it but the correct title won't appear until the site is refreshed in a week]

"'Playful Hunt', consisting of title-page and sheet of explanation in letterpress,plus fifteen numbered plates showing absurd ways to hunt birds; second edition(Bologna, nella stamperia di Lelio della Volpe, 1745) of a series first published in 1684"

'Genio: Laborem ocio, ocium labore variat'

"Statue of Genius, surrounded by childrendevoting themselves to various pastimes" 1691

'Il bilanzino giustissimo con due figure d'oro'

"A Spanish and French soldier weighed in a balance,with the Frenchman emerging on top" 1692

'Il corrier che mai si ferma, si corre per le poste e non si burla'

"Two figures on horseback, the traveller led by Time as the courier,ride towards the pit that death has dug before him" 1691

'Mira qui come va senza ritengo la cecitade humana al cieco regno'"Series of three plates with a procession of blind-folded humans,representing the seven deadly sins, being led to death by devils" 1679

'Quale di questi tre e più intricato?'"Three trios, of foxes with a hen, of money-lenderswith a victim, and cats with a mouse" 1675-1710

'Se conoscer mi voi mi scoprirai'A beautiful woman playing a guitar; a flaplifts to reveal a skulll beneath the head. 1698 [note: I removed the flap - it was just a blank pieceoff the top of the print the way they photographed it]

'Secreto sicurissimo per non mai morire'"Death as a skeleton attacks with hisscythe a man in bed who blows at him" 1706

'Va tutto in fuga: Globi di fumo son titoli e vanti: Fumo e Cenere'"A large chimney-piece with a fire at the base, up whichpeople climb, but at the chimney at the top emergeonly broken shreds of their power and authority" 1700

{puzzle-picture}Rebus in nine lines with religious and moral texts designedto be cut out and pasted onto one side of a fan. 1693

One of the most significant cultural collections of 2-dimensional art (prints, drawings and paintings) in the world made its relatively silent debut online recently. The British Museum has spent more than 15 years gearing up for this moment.

In my opinion this is the equivalent of the commencement of NYPL or the Library of Congress online. Seriously, this is a vast treasure trove and once you've spent any time there you'll never bother returning to poor old BibliOdyssey.

The advanced search page is the best place to start (and bookmark) [there appears to be no real home page as such]. The size of the database is enormous. There are more than 13,000 satirical prints for instance. A free text search on 'London' produces a similar number. There are over one thousand prints by Albrecht Dürer. 'Ornament' returns more than three thousand images. Although the image sizes vary, most are at least close to screen size and there is no watermarking. [See the Guardian Arts article]

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Rather than go wandering aimlessly around with my mouth agog, poaching images left, right and centre, I thought I would take a sampling from the Italian graphic artist, Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634-1718) whose novel etchings were first introduced to me by a series of posts made by the esteemed (and now retired) custodian of Giornale Nuovo, Mr H.

To save playing the role of mere regurgitator, go and see the posts Giuseppe Maria Mitelli; More Mitelli and Mitelli's Games for further information about the artist and to see some other examples of his eclectic works. [There are some additional Mitelli alphabet images scattered across a few other posts at Giornale Nuovo]. I'll just be resting in the corner while you're gone.